I have just upgraded to Acrobat Professional 8 and created a survey with Designer. I have sent it out to some people and got two XML files back. The files themselves contain the answers, I see the data there. I have re-named the files and saved them in a folder on my desktop.

I then open Acrobat Pro 8, go to forms > manage form data > merge data files into spread sheet, "add" the two XML files from that folder, then click "export" and save as "report.csv", which is the default setting. It comes up with a window saying "Done!" and I click on "View File now". This opens Excel, which is what I want.

THE PROBLEM IS that there is no data and I only see the two FILE NAMES in column A row 2 and 3. The file names are in full with ".xml" at the end. The data within the XML files (that I want) does not appear in this CSV spreadsheet that I just created.

One further comment: I did not have this problem with Acrobat Pro 7, the data sets came out and I easily edited them, created graphs etc.

Hello Dima,
I am trying to do the same thing and are getting the same results as you. There is a Free XML Toolbox you can install into excel to help import data - but you must have Enterprise version of excel.
Also keen to find the answer
Cheers
gazzzz

It appears that no one ever posted an answer to this question. However, I am having the exact same problem today. It's definitely Acrobat 8 related, because I can export the .xml files into spreadsheet using Acrobat 7. Any ideas?

Yes, it's still broken, but I did discover a workaround. When Merging Data Files into a Spreadsheet in Acrobat, save the output file as XML rather than CSV. That creates a long XML document that contains all of the original files in a serial format.

For what it's worth, I was able to populate Excel using the Merge Data Files into Spreadsheet feature as long as the form being referenced in the XML files is available on my PC. When I changed the file name of the form to something different prior to using the Merge Data feature all I got was a CSV file in Excel with the file names I was merging.

I am having the same problem with Acrobat 8. It used to work, then eventually it would work every other time, now it won't work at all. I called their tech support and after holding for 5 minutes the phone rang and then hung up on me.

Problem solved!.. Well not exactly.. its bit longer, but much matter than manual copy & paste.
..works for me..

We can first export it as a .xml database. (which is using Acrobat->Forms->Manage Form Data->Merge Data Files into Spreadsheet ->Add Files (add your multiple xmls)->export -> Export as ".xml ", in types, select .xml, This options would merge all the xmls into one xml database.

(Acrobat lost the ability to merge things into .csv file due to Window's .net framework updates.. but ability to export as .xml would always be stable)

Tim's solution does not work for me. Acrobat 9 saves its form data in XFDF format (looks like XML to me). However, the Merge data feature has CSV conversion and no other--and the excel spreadsheets come up with no data, just the filenames in column 1.

Is there a workaround that Adobe might have? We counted heavily on this feature when we designed our surveys, and it was nifty until a few days ago. Now, its one more non-working "feature."

Felt like a positive heading for a change Dima here, the originator of the post.

Well, I now have VISTA and Acrobat9 - bought CS4 a while ago. And alas - the SAME FREAKING PROBLEM as I had on XP and Acrobat 8.

Now, luckily I found my post. Read everyone's feedback, and have some great news:

1. If you read above, you'll find how to merge into an XML file, as opposed to merging into a CSV. I then imported this "merged" XML file into Excel 2007 as data, pressed all the "ok" buttons that came up and A MAGIC TABLE with all data nicely populated appeared! Task complete.

2. To test the other theory, I simply copied my original interactive PDF file that I mailed out to everyone INTO the folder with all the re-named XML replies. Then, when I was selecting the "data files to be merged" I just selected ALL of the files in the folder (Ctrl+A). May be it selected the PDF file as well, not sure. Anyway, I then saved the "report.csv" that was created into this folder also. This made for a messy folder. BUT - it WORKED!!!!!!

It seems the engine for collating the info is working, but Adobe forget to give you some instructions to place original PDF file into the folder with all the XML replies.

Adobe - this could be a simple message when you go to select the XML replies. Good luck with fixing this bug!